The Walking Dead Season 3

[Scout101]

That IS the big problem with trying to do a zombie show that's long lasting. That's why the majority pretty much show the initial outbreak, or a short time thereafter, so you can skip a lot of the logistics that drag you down later. Zombies only really make sense in a short-term way.

So to make the show work, kinda HAVE to be stuck in a perpetual '1 month after outbreak' timeframe.

Otherwise, the zombies die/fall apart, the human defenses get too built up, zombies become commonplace enough that no one's afraid anymore, etc.

You NEED the fresh threat of zombie herds, and the certain amount of fright or at least overwhelming numbers, or the concept just doesn't work. Then it's just random post-appocolypse show, and whenever anyone dies, you stab them in the head and move on with your day...

 

[Morpheus 02]

Thee's a couple of ways to stretch the show

1. Have one season by flashbacks of other survivors (so say, end of season 4 end with our heroes meeting one or two other groups and it looks like a standoff. Season 5 gives us the flashbacks of the "The Others", so we see what they are REALLY about (i.e. burnt out heroes like our own, or devious villains). Season 6 resumes the fight, and see who survives

2. Parallel stories around the world with, with a season where they all join together. That could make some interesting spin-off series, where say Korea (who are experts in arced dramas ) gives their own perspective.


---

As for "new" zombies...there could have been larger groups of survivors for a while that get decimated.

perhaps some wars happen whee many people die (and they don't get bodies for fear of being shot).

Maybe a plague happens, and many die before a cure is found.

Not everyone knows that ANY death makes one a zombie, so people find out too late.

Also, the winter might have been particularly cold, so decomposition process was literally frozen for a good long while (the opposite of Chicago's last winter).

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

You NEED the fresh threat of zombie herds, and the certain amount of fright or at least overwhelming numbers, or the concept just doesn't work. Then it's just random post-appocolypse show, and whenever anyone dies, you stab them in the head and move on with your day...

Unfortunately, the comic set that "random post-apocolypse show" in motion, which is why the best zombie stories are short--as in the movies: there's a beginning, middle and end, because as you say, if it continues, its just a retread of the same survivor vs. zombie conflicts or survivor vs. survivor bickering/fights week after week, no matter the location, change of characters or bloodshed.

I believe the opposite is the reason the creators of the Resident Evil videogames have been so wildly successful: they created a zombie outbreak, but added science and mysticism to the mix to expand the kind of threats the protagonists will face. The film versions did not execute this well, but the games opened the path to making the zombie plot something more complicated than what we see in TWD.

 

[wissaboo]

Thee's a couple of ways to stretch the show

1. Have one season by flashbacks of other survivors (so say, end of season 4 end with our heroes meeting one or two other groups and it looks like a standoff. Season 5 gives us the flashbacks of the "The Others", so we see what they are REALLY about (i.e. burnt out heroes like our own, or devious villains). Season 6 resumes the fight, and see who survives

2. Parallel stories around the world with, with a season where they all join together. That could make some interesting spin-off series, where say Korea (who are experts in arced dramas ) gives their own perspective.


---

As for "new" zombies...there could have been larger groups of survivors for a while that get decimated.

perhaps some wars happen whee many people die (and they don't get bodies for fear of being shot).

Maybe a plague happens, and many die before a cure is found.

Not everyone knows that ANY death makes one a zombie, so people find out too late.

Also, the winter might have been particularly cold, so decomposition process was literally frozen for a good long while (the opposite of Chicago's last winter).

they could kill everyone in this show and start up fresh at the origional point societal breakdown with a whole new group and have just as compelling a show.

 

[Gotham Central]

I think that you folks are dramatically underestimating how many people there are in the world at this point.

There are seven billion people on this planet. Its a good bet that the zombie apocalypse only took care of about a quarter of that in the first year.

The thing is this particular ZA comes with the added problem that EVERYONE will become a zombie. Thus even in communities that thought that they were safe and made it through the first year, the could still fall if someone drops dead and they don't expect them to change. That could bring down even well fortified communities and thus create brand new waves of walkers. Hell that National Guard group was from a site that was only recently overrun...more than a year after the initial outbreak.

Add to that survivor communities where folks will inevitably die more slowly due to starvation, disease and tribal warfare...its going to take a while to bring down those billions. The herds that we saw in Atlanta cannot even come close to the actual population of that city. The group we are following could be in a location with a fairly sparse population.

I hate to bring up WWZ, but that book painted pretty grim but elaborate picture of the difficulty in reclaming the planet after a ZA. It took 10 years to win the war....and it took that long in a ZA where everyone was not infected and thus were not guaranteed to turn.

 

[wissaboo]

I'm thinking 90% of the population is already zombies or dead. At least in the area they are.

 

[Gotham Central]

I'm thinking 90% of the population is already zombies or dead. At least in the area they are.

There is nothing to support the idea that 90% of the population is dead. There just are not enough bodies/zombies around to account for a population that large.

 

[wissaboo]

well, there are little sprinklings of humans, and herds of zombies

 

[Scout101]

I think that you folks are dramatically underestimating how many people there are in the world at this point.

There are seven billion people on this planet. Its a good bet that the zombie apocalypse only took care of about a quarter of that in the first year.

Sorry, but think you're using bad math. Of your 7 billion people, a little over 50% of them live in a city somewhere in the world. So, there's a little over 3.5 billion dead (or undead) within a week or so, give or take. That's just official urban areas, I'm guessing it's closer to 65-70% if you can count suburban areas, and anywhere within a few hours' walk of a city. Now we're down to around 2.1 billion give or take. Mostly in the first couple weeks. Might have some small pockets that hold out a while, but there's no food/water in a city that will keep things going for long, and no more coming. Plus, the aforementioned billions of nearby zombies, so you're mostly toast.

Probably the most unlikely part of Walking Dead is how close to Atlanta the survivor group is/was. Make a lot more sense if they came from the sticks, and were heading into Atlanta because of the CDC and whatnot. If they started there, seems unlikely they'd get out.

So anyway, down to around 30% of the world's population (give or take) within a few weeks. Now release the zombie hordes, cut off food supplies, allow for human/human violence to ensue, natural disasters, failure of a few nuclear power plants, and a winter to survive on their own, and can't imagine there's more than 10% or so of the population that has a chance, and they're in the sparsely-populated 3rd world countries where things like food deliveries and electricity weren't going to be missed.

I'm thinking 90% of the population is already zombies or dead. At least in the area they are.

There is nothing to support the idea that 90% of the population is dead. There just are not enough bodies/zombies around to account for a population that large.

Because it's bad tv (plus hard to film) if it's just a pile of dead bodies everywhere. Half a million people in Atlanta, goes to a couple million if you count nearby outlying areas. Obviously we didn't see a couple million zombies or corpses. We also saw about 20 survivors, so feel free to extend those numbers out as far as you like. If there's even 1000 zombies seen for every 20 survivors, you're still looking at .001% survival rate. (projects to 70k humans if you use worldwide numbers, but some areas would be much less impacted, and wouldn't see such bad numbers.)

Even if you assume that there's more compared to our 20 or so we've seen, I'll give you a nice big 500 (not anywhere near what wev'e seen total). Works out to .025%, 1.8 million in the world.

There aren't enough zombies PLUS humans PLUS dead bodies to account for the whole population anyway (or even a decent percent), so can't use that to begin with. Most appocolyptic shows/movies usually accept the conceit that someone magically cleaned up a lot of the bodies...

 

[wissaboo]

all those extra zombies are walking in circles in fields or something

 

[MPH]

bad math, though. The BULK of new zombies would have been right at the start of the outbreak. They either turned or killed a huge percentage of the humans. From now on, the new zombie creation would be a trickle at best.

Especially since the zombies are just as likely to tear apart as to bite and turn a person, so they're not even making new zombies at a slow level, it's a very tiny number. Small human population, and really just getting the ones that die of non-zombie causes at this point, so they won't be replenishing the herd.

That what I thought! Its an easy excuse for the producers to make this continued zombie infestion viable

 

[RJDiogenes]

Daryl has mentioned in the past that they should be doing that.

That would be far too much common sense for this series, which features characters making irrational decisions every step of the way, as though they have learned nothing from surviving in a world overrun with zombies.

It's not all that bad. Generally speaking, the characters act no more irrationally than people in real life do.

bad math, though. The BULK of new zombies would have been right at the start of the outbreak. They either turned or killed a huge percentage of the humans. From now on, the new zombie creation would be a trickle at best.

Especially since the zombies are just as likely to tear apart as to bite and turn a person, so they're not even making new zombies at a slow level, it's a very tiny number. Small human population, and really just getting the ones that die of non-zombie causes at this point, so they won't be replenishing the herd.

Right, beat me to it.

Yes, exactly.

So for their own ends, large numbers of zombies will continue to be produced forever.

As with anything, there's room for creative license. The zombie virus slows or stops decomposition. The winter also helps. There is still zombie production from suburban areas. But that can only take you so far before it becomes too unbelievable-- maybe a couple of years or so. We should soon be seeing fewer and few zombies and more successful enclaves of survivors.

 

[Venardhi]

Because it's bad tv (plus hard to film) if it's just a pile of dead bodies everywhere. Half a million people in Atlanta, goes to a couple million if you count nearby outlying areas. Obviously we didn't see a couple million zombies or corpses. We also saw about 20 survivors, so feel free to extend those numbers out as far as you like. If there's even 1000 zombies seen for every 20 survivors, you're still looking at .001% survival rate. (projects to 70k humans if you use worldwide numbers, but some areas would be much less impacted, and wouldn't see such bad numbers.)

Atlanta urban area is like 5 million people, not half a million.

We've seen a few different groups mind you. The old folks home from season one, the gang from season two, Hershel's farm, now the town, the prisoners, the group from the latest episode, etc. That adds up to a lot more than 20 survivors. While it is clearly a small fraction of the overall population, if you extrapolate it out to other areas and assume even a few neighborhoods or facilities that managed to survive the initial outbreak and shore up their defenses, there could be areas with tens of thousands fairly easily.

I think it is safe to assume at least a few million people are still alive at the time of the show's most recent events. Is that enough to keep the hordes replentished? Of course not, but that assumes they need replentishing. Once the dead are walking I don't see any reason they should be dying off out of something as simple as starvation or exposure.

 

[Kegg]

I'm not sure modern audiences will accept a story arc that has the characters forever living a more grim life. There has to be IMO at some point hope and a search for the "cure,"

The TV writers have said they have basically no interest in doing a 'cure' storyline, and I don't blame them (I believe Glen Mazzara said he felt it would make Walking Dead too much of a science fiction series when he considers its natural genre to be horror).

'Hope' in the context of this series then is stuff like what the prison was at the start of this season, when Rick built it up as the safe refuge the group desperately needed, a place they could settle down on, grow crops in, and have a life for themselves.

So hope is not finding a way to end zombies, it's finding a way to live in a zombie-infested world and to ensure that there will be another generation of human beings (and as such children like Carl and Judith are part of that hope).

I'm disappointed in Andrea because Dale would be disappointed in Andrea.

Dale's fixation on Andrea was generally pretty creepy and posessive. Do not miss him at all.

 

[trekkiebaggio]

I'm not sure modern audiences will accept a story arc that has the characters forever living a more grim life. There has to be IMO at some point hope and a search for the "cure,"

The TV writers have said they have basically no interest in doing a 'cure' storyline, and I don't blame them (I believe Glen Mazzara said he felt it would make Walking Dead too much of a science fiction series when he considers its natural genre to be horror).

'Hope' in the context of this series then is stuff like what the prison was at the start of this season, when Rick built it up as the safe refuge the group desperately needed, a place they could settle down on, grow crops in, and have a life for themselves.

So hope is not finding a way to end zombies, it's finding a way to live in a zombie-infested world and to ensure that there will be another generation of human beings (and as such children like Carl and Judith are part of that hope).

Which I think is far more interesting than finding a cure. I'd love to see how people adapt to this new world and what new traditions spring up, like eventually I think shooting loved ones in the head when they die will become accepted practice, and a ceremony may even come about because of it.

I had a thought last night. I know some people want to know how the outbreak got started. I don't think they'll actually answer it in the main storyline, but if they wanted to reveal it they could do it as the last scene, so the final scene of the last episode is sort of the beginning of the show.

 

[AvBaur]

The other thing is, even if the decomposition process is slowed, these zombies are obviously rotting away-- how many months or years will it be before the zombie herds become completely unjustifiable?

One of the producers (Darabont?) said some time ago that, rather than decomposing quickly and completely, the "older" zombies become "mummified" and therefore can be around for quite a while.

 

[Derishton]

Which I think is far more interesting than finding a cure. I'd love to see how people adapt to this new world and what new traditions spring up, like eventually I think shooting loved ones in the head when they die will become accepted practice, and a ceremony may even come about because of it.

If you haven't seen the amazing Fido, you should seek it out: it mines this territory pretty well.

 

[trekkiebaggio]

Which I think is far more interesting than finding a cure. I'd love to see how people adapt to this new world and what new traditions spring up, like eventually I think shooting loved ones in the head when they die will become accepted practice, and a ceremony may even come about because of it.

If you haven't seen the amazing Fido, you should seek it out: it mines this territory pretty well.

I haven't no, thanks for the recommendation I'll be sure to look out for it!

 

[RJDiogenes]

I'm disappointed in Andrea because Dale would be disappointed in Andrea.

Dale's fixation on Andrea was generally pretty creepy and posessive. Do not miss him at all.

He was my favorite character. It's sad that we live in an age where the knee-jerk response to unsolicited friendship and concern is "creepy." Coincidentally, I was thinking of this last night while I was watching Annie at the theater. The storyline concerns a rich old man whose life is empty until he comes to love an 11-year-old orphan girl-- he even proposes adoption in a manner similar to proposing marriage. It's quite heartwarming, but I was wondering to myself how many people in the audience interpreted that as "creepy" in the current climate of political correctness.

The other thing is, even if the decomposition process is slowed, these zombies are obviously rotting away-- how many months or years will it be before the zombie herds become completely unjustifiable?

One of the producers (Darabont?) said some time ago that, rather than decomposing quickly and completely, the "older" zombies become "mummified" and therefore can be around for quite a while.

Sure, and that's all well and good, but even mummies crumble to dust after a while. Artistic license can only be stretched so far.

 

[Kegg]

He was my favorite character. It's sad that we live in an age where the knee-jerk response to unsolicited friendship and concern is "creepy."

He only gave that to the young blonde woman. He was perfectly comfortable with letting Jacqui die in the CDC. Even if we assume his motives weren't sexual (which apparently they were in the comic) he was treating Andrea, an adult, as someone he should guilt trip and manipulate into doing what he wants.